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Zalora, Rocket Internet‘s pan-Asian fashion retail site, has launched an iOS app, as it seeks to capture the growing base of consumers in Asia who are using smartphones as their primary, and sometimes only, way of getting online.

The Zalora app was quietly released to the Apple App Store on the 17th of April before the wider announcement today, and was built by the company’s Singapore operations. It said last month it started building a regional software development center here to work on its Web platform and mobile apps, so it’s likely we’ll see more apps coming out for the store.

The iOS app allows you to browse and buy items on the store organized by brand or category, and rate favorites as well. Zalora says the app’s catalog is pulled from the store’s various collections across its inventory for different countries, so it sounds like you might be able to view more items in the app than on its country-specific sites.

Update: While Android phones are more popular in Asia, Zalora said it decided to debut on the iPhone because it enjoys more than traffic coming from iOS devices compared to Android phones. “The iPhone segment is particularly inclined to online shopping with high basket sizes,” the company has found.

It has plans to work on an Android app, but would not say when that is coming out. Zalora attracts about 4 million visits weekly in Southeast Asia, and about 30 percent of that comes from mobile phones. This underscores the company’s decision to divert some resources to mobile efforts. This is its first native app, but it already launched a mobile site in January.

Still, Android traffic is likely to keep going up for Zalora. According to a consumer study done in Southeast Asia by Ericsson, by the third quarter last year 31 percent of phones here were Android-based. The iPhone had about 19 percent of the overall handset market.

One country does buck that trend, however. Zalora’s headquarters of Singapore has a 46 percent adoption of iOS, and just 29 percent for Android. Singapore has a smartphone penetration of around 90 to 92 percent, depending on who you ask, so those numbers are generally higher than neighboring countries.

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OverviewRocket Internet is an Internet platform that identifies and builds proven internet business models and transfers them to new, underserved or untapped markets where it seeks to scale them into market leading online companies.
The platform is focused on proven online business models that satisfy basic consumer needs across four sectors: e-Commerce, Marketplaces, Financial Technology and Travel. It …